Nuudelisoppa

Month: February 2008

  • Ubuntu: USB keyboard not working after powerdown, powerup

    I’m affected by Bug #48773, which, if I understand it correctly, means that my Nforce2 motherboard’s BIOS (the latest, FN45S00W from Shuttle) doesn’t treat the shutdown signal like it should, leaving all USB devices powered on. Windows (XP) isn’t affected or maybe it has a workaround – possibly something similar to the one presented over at Launchpad and Kernel Bug Tracker.

    My setup doesn’t have annoyingly bright lights, but I do have one particularly troublesome issue related to this problem: my USB keyboard doesn’t seem to be able to wake up when I turn the power back on. I have to unplug and replug it in order to resurrect it. There is a weird performace issue in Windows when I hook it up into the PS2 port with an adapter, so I’d rather keep it plugged in as a USB device. But I may have to reconsider, since an official fix for the issue is considered unlikely.

  • Wanted: a simple Gnome reminder application/applet

    For those who are willing to install stuff outside Synaptic there’s Alarm clock (haven’t tried it myself), but for the rest of us it looks like there’s no going round Evolution.

    Thanks to Mr. Murphy, I went looking for a reminder app right after uninstalling Evolution, for which I had no use. Of course, this caused the calendar available from the panel’s clock not to have any such functionality at all, so I had to go back and re-install Evolution. It’s a shame, because although Evolution’s calendar probably does everything you could ever want, it seems like overkill for someone used to the rather minimal Freebie Notes from Power Soft in Windows.

  • Solved: Ekiga (Ubuntu): Registration Failed: Forbidden (Rekisteröityminen epäonnistui: Estetty)

    It looks like they’ve really screwed up the account management over at Ekiga.net: I was allowed to create an ID with a password using special characters, but then the Ekiga client failed to log in with it (giving me the error message I titled this entry with) and I couldn’t even log in at the website.

    After requesting my password via e-mail (at the login website) as if I had forgotten it, I got an email not with the password but with a URL which, when clicked, gave me a new password. The new one was a measely five characters long; is that how insecure they expect them to be? Well I changed it to yet another one, still 20 characters long but this time containing only numbers and letters, and it seems to have solved the issue: I’m now able to login with the client.

  • Solved: Ubuntu: cannot save KeePassX database / saving disabled

    This is probably the dumbest user error made in the history of computing, and thus probably useful only if you want to have a laugh at my expense. Go ahead, I fully deserve it.

    I had successfully switched my Windows storage drive to NTFS-3G and thought I would now have write-access to KeePassX‘s database. But despite having write-access to other files (such as images) on the drive, the Save button was still disabled in KeepAssX after opening the database file from it.

    I tried copying the database to my home directory and opening it from there, but it remained unsavable. I checked, and all the access bytes were as they should be in order to allow for modifying the file. I tried creating a new database, and that seemed to work. I even contemplated exporting the old database to another format in Windows and then importing it in Ubuntu…

    …until I realized I hadn’t actually made any changes in the database prior to trying to save it.

    That’s right. After creating a test entry into the database I could save it just fine, even onto my NTFS drive. Doh!

    I fully understand the reasoning behind disabling the saving function when no changes have been made in the data (KeepAssX is hardly alone in this choice of logic), but in this case my intuition seemed to work massively against that logic, so I guess that qualifies the issue as one of accessibility.

    In my defence I can say that I did change the order in which the entries are shown in KeePassX (for some reason they seem to default to reverse alphabetical in Ubuntu) before trying to save, and that’s why my subconscious mind fully expected saving to be enabled. Apparently the listing order is not among the data saved in the database, but if it is, the Save button not reacting to it is an obvious bug in KeePassX.

  • Ubuntu: how to cut MPEG2 streams

    I went looking for a Cuttermaran equivalent for Ubuntu, for cutting the MPEG2 streams recorded in MythTV. First I tried GOPchop, but despite indexing the file, it didn’t show it in its file listing after opening it and so I couldn’t really do any editing with it.

    Then I found Avidemux. Despite the unfortunately limited -sounding name and repository description I decided to try it and boy, am I glad I did. It’s quite capable of cutting MPEG files as well as dealing with many other codecs, so I highly recommend it. It’s even available for Windows.

  • Ubuntu: can't drag windows between workspaces in Workspace Switcher

    Looks like I’ve run into Bug #15069. What’s strange is that, I’m pretty sure I remember that prior to activating the Extra settings (with the default setup after installing Ubuntu), I did have some of the fancy stuff that’s apparently provided by compiz, such as the simple Viewport Switcher (or Desktop Wall), but now I have to go back all the way down to None to make dragging windows work. Either the default setup uses some clever hack which was lost when I turned on Extra visual effects, or my memory is failing. There’s a Workarounds utility in compizconfig settings manager, which would seem like a fitting place for a fix for the issue, but there’s none at the moment.

  • Solved: jerky picture with live MythTV (non-free ATI drivers)

    I had a problem with the live (Watching) TV picture stuttering badly in MythTV. The recordings worked just fine when played back with Totem, so the problem was not with the signal but with MythTV’s playback.

    The solution for me turned out to be uninstalling the non-free binary drivers for my ATI Radeon display adapter. I had installed them right after installing Ubuntu, but after uninstalling them I can now safely say that it was a mistake installing them in the first place.

    Apart from Miro now playing back FLVs with the colors all wrong, I’ve had no problems, MythTV no longer suffers from jerkyness and I get to enjoy all the nice desktop effects which didn’t work either with the proprietary drivers.

  • MythTV: how to start/stop recording

    When watching live TV in MythTV, press R to start recording. Now, I have yet to find a simple hotkey to stop the recording right then and there – pressing R again does stop it, but it also deletes the recording (or cancels it).

    To stop the recording, you first need to exit the watching mode by pressing Esc. Next, from the main menu, go to Manage Recordings and then Upcoming Recordings. From the list available there you can then select the program currently being recorded with the up and down arrows. When selected, pressing Enter finally gives you the choice of stopping the recording (again, selectable with up and down arrows and the Enter key).

    When I began to look for the solution for this problem, I was amazed (and truth be told, extremely frustrated as well) that Google didn’t have a direct answer to what seemed to me to be a pretty obvious question. However, it looks like the operating logic behind MythTV is based heavily on using program guides and scheduling instead of on what is perhaps a little old-fashioned way, controlling the start and stop of recording manually.

  • Ubuntu (Gnome): roskakori työpöydälle

    Quakenetin #ubuntu.fi:n wikin vastaavaa ohjetta suomenkieliselle Gutsylle soveltaen: päävalikon (käynnistä-valikon) kuvakkeen päällä oikean hiirennapin valikosta Muokkaa valikoita, siellä Sovellukset > Järjestelmätyökalut > Asetusten muokkaus -kohtaan väkänen. Sen jälkeen päävalikosta Järjestelmätyökalut > Asetusten muokkaus ja /apps/nautilus/desktop/trash_icon_visible -kohtaan väkänen.

  • Solved: Ubuntu: Miro 1.1.1 crashing on start

    This one was pretty easy, as the working solution for me was available directly from Miro Forums. After shutting Miro down (or rather, after it has shut itself down), do:

    cd ~
    rm -rf .miro
    rm -rf .gconf/apps/miro
    sudo apt-get remove sun-java6-plugin

    Obviously, this is not a good solution if you need to use Java on the web. For me it’s not a problem, since I like to have the Java plugin disabled anyway, for security and speed.